[IV]

[onlyforthedream]

I smell motor oil, gunsmoke, salt and metal. The sounds of the motorcycle engine, the plane, the choppy, freezing waters of the English Channel assault my ears. It’s happening again. It’s happening again, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I have always endeavored to remember the ways in which I’m fortunate, always tried not to take anything for granted. I was born to Irish immigrants. We were poor, not that I understood that until I was older. My dad died when I was young, my mother died when I was thirteen, and I was ill, my whole life. Sickly. Things were never easy, but that just meant everything mattered more, that there was more to be thankful for. All that said, I have never felt so damned as I do in this moment.

“No,” I murmur, grip holding tight on the throttle, “no, there has to be another way. There has to- Bucky!” I shout, looking at him over my shoulder.

“Bucky, listen! Make the jump, but forget the bomb. Grab my hand once you’re steady!”

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[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

I throw my hand out, feeling a desperate jolt in my stomach as I slip back a crucial inch and another of something that feels like triumph when our hands connect. I grip Bucky’s wrist, and the extra leverage means I can push myself up with my other hand, instead of trying to pull.

It’s surreal, to find myself on the wing of the plane, right there next to Buck. I’ve seen the next part a thousand times, I know how little time we have, and I also know where Bucky’s always looked the moment before he tells me it’s gonna blow. I fling myself over the front of the wing and drop under it, a maneuver that’s no more dizzying than the rest of this, whatever the hell is happening to us.

I see the panel, clear as day. Not the fuse, but the compartment the wiring’s got to be in. I know it’s got to be there, because this compartment wasn’t in the original schematic of the plane. It’s been over a decade and I still remember every traitorous line of it.

“I found it!” I slam a fist into it, denting the metal, then pry it off and fling it away.

“No time for subtlety,” I say through gritted teeth, shoving my hand into the heart of the bomb and ripping it out. I drop a fistful of wires, dig the toe of one boot into the hole I made, and use it to clamber back up the side of the plane.

“There!”

[onlyapassenger]

It's not real: those three words keep running through Bucky's head like a mantra, that none of this is real, that it's some trick, that this moment in time is what it is, and there's no changing it, no matter how much Steve might wish otherwise. Yet despite the knowledge, Bucky looks over at his friend, now, sees the determination written plainly over youthful features, and lets out a laugh that's equal parts giddy and disbelieving.

The cold air of the North Atlantic bites at his skin, but it's not enough to wipe the breathless grin from Bucky's face. Because for a moment -- a moment that can't possibly last -- it's like the good old days. Captain America and his partner Bucky, off on another high-flying adventure rather than the mission that should, by all rights, put them on ice.

"Got any other tricks up your sleeve?"

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

“Yeah,” I reply, kicking in the side of the plane’s glass hatch to reach in and grab the control yoke, and start the plane in a wide arc to direct it back toward the island.

“I call this one ‘return to sender’.”

This is how it should have gone. Maybe I would have been killed in a firefight, maybe in the Pacific; maybe I would have made it back home and become a police officer or an illustrator, or an astronaut. Maybe the government would have trotted me out in front of every cause that needed championing, maybe I would have kept on being Captain America even through Vietnam. I don’t know how the world would have changed, but this feeling makes me not care.

This is how it should have gone.

I look over at Bucky, squinting through the force of the wind. I can’t fight my own smile. We’re doing it. No, we did it.

“We’ve got to drop off before it gets too close to the rocks! Ready, partner?”

[onlyapassenger]

“C’mon, Cap,” calls Bucky, shooting Steve a sideways look that’s ineffective for its exuberance. Zemo and his men are just barely visible in the distance, and Bucky can only imagine reactions to the plane heading their way.

“You really need to ask?”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

It feels like a win, and if I’m honest, I’d forgotten what that was like.

“Go!” I shout over the drone of the engine and the rush of the wind, not diving from the wing until the tiniest fraction of a second after Bucky does. I can’t, until that moment, until I am one hundred percent sure that I’m not leaving him behind.

Not again. Never again.

The fall to the water is exhilarating the way recklessly stupid things usually are. I think in the distance I can hear the angry, panicked shouts of a madman and his soldiers, and the burst of metal and mortar and air as the plane explodes. The water is like a wall of ice rushing up to meet me, but it doesn’t hit nearly as hard as I remember. It’s murky, but I can make out Bucky a few yards away and can’t stop myself from smiling, cold be damned, as I kick toward the light and break the surface of the water.